Mary Sues For Dummies (An Extensive Field Guide)
by PI-Valkyrie-exLorien
Summary: Having accidentally released a horde of Mary Sues (and Gary Stus) into Middle Earth, Galadriel sets out with a band of odd companions to destroy the problem she created before it gets out of hand. Hint: it already did. Slash, Femslash, and humor as promised. Hilariously AU.
1. In the Company of Brain Spawn

**Hi! Welcome to the odd companion story to _Matchmaker, Matchmaker_! You don't need to have read that one first, because this gives a general synopsis of it in the first chapter. This is a completely different story. If you want, though, feel free to read it, as well as the odd companion one-shot _Of Hit Men, Cats, and Candy Thieves._****Basically the established pairings from this universe are as follows (and weird): Jenny/Gibbs (NCIS), Tauriel/Eowyn, Aragorn/Legolas, Haldir/Spalko (yes the underrated Indiana Jones character), Book Faramir/Movie Faramir...**_  
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**Anyways, I promised this fic for a while, and here it is. There will be a lot of slash, femslash, and some silly random stuff like Faramir-cest, and such. So if that's not your thing, put this down. But since we're following the same totally-not-canon-compliant path of the first one, our main pairing will still be femslash and a crossover. Because it's entertaining, and you don't see a lot of it. Makes for good humor :)**

* * *

_Classic GDIME: nearly always human; female, early to mid twenties. Hair golden blonde or as dark as a night with no stars. Usually accompanied by bad purple prose and poor grammar. Shipped with either Aragorn or Legolas depending on the Suethor's tastes._

Who am I, you ask? Why I am the unholy brain-spawn of the Fourth Wall. So to speak. But Max is a far shorter name, so we'll go with that. And how did I get roped into this mess?

It all started with the most cliche storyline of all eternity: a girl from your world got pitched unceremoniously like a sack of rotten potatoes into Middle Earth. The first GDIME since Peter Jackson's adaptation of _The Lord of the Rings. _Now that sudden change of media-verses had shaken the equilibrium up already. But when badly-written Elvish Karsashians started popping up all over Middle Earth, the Fourth Wall got so upset that it cracked.

One big, long, crack, and the rest is history. With each fan fiction the crack grew wider, splitting off like roots. Finally, Tauriel shows up in a parody fic, and the Wall splits in two. But that wasn't enough. Suddenly there's a whole guild of media characters dropping in for a chapter or two. The Faramirs ran off an eloped, Eowyn married Tauriel and bailed for the NCIS-universe, and Haldir and Spalko produced an adorable baby Elvish assassin. Thus the story goes:

A little more than a year ago, Tauriel of Eryn Lasgalen jumped into fan fiction to escape a love triangle Peter Jackson had arranged for her between Legolas and that hot Dwarf I can't remember the name of. Kili! Yeah, him.

A wise decision, in the long run. That love triangle would have sent the purists into even more of a riot than they were already throwing and cleared the way for Tauriel-Sues to come popping out of nowhere (not that they haven't, but in far fewer numbers). But the canon was to be messed with anyway.

She joined the Fellowship of the Ring in Lothlorien, with the intend of matchmaking Aragorn and Legolas along their journey. Yet in Rohan, The Plot took on a life of its own. Jenny Shepherd and Leroy Jethro Gibbs made a brief cameos as Sue-slayers, as well as the Guild of Characters Who Fan Fiction Has Butchered, led by Colonel Doctor Irina Spalko (the most infamously butchered character in all fan fiction, according to our author).

But as The Plot ran rampant, Tauriel came to fall in love with Eowyn, inadvertently causing the wrath of the greatest Mary Sue that ever lived. Tauriel was already defying canon: She had caused an accidental snogging between Spalko and Haldir of Lorien, not to mention a drunken incident between Legolas and Aragorn which no one was awake enough to remember, later dubbed 'the Hula incident.'

In the Houses of Healing, she was attacked at Eowyn's bedside by the Sue Queen: Bella Swan, and during that battle Eowyn shot Bella through the heart. Then Spalko shot her twice more even though she was already dead, just because it was satisfying. She and Eowyn proceeded to 'make out like teenagers' in the account of Leroy Jethro Gibbs.

In the end, Aragorn married Legolas, Tauriel married Eowyn, Book Faramir began a meaningful relationship with Movie Faramir, and Haldir got Spalko pregnant before they both subsequently refused to ever get married because they felt that a legal contract would demean their relationship. Plus by Elvish standards they had already wed. Their daughter now bears the name Teithariel Eowyn, because the author couldn't bear to start another story without giving them some closure, seeing how invested she'd been in the development of their relationship. And because it was Eowyn who shipped them from the very beginning.

And then, just when things were beginning to settle down, Galadriel accidentally released a hoard of Mary Sues. That was the last straw for the Fourth Wall. It crumbled completely, and spat me out with a shitload of random knowledge of just about everything to fix all its problems. Now, granted I probably can't fix _everything, _but if I could get rid of all the Sues and Stus then maybe there would be some remnant of the barrier, preventing anything like this from ever happening again.

I would've been pretty efficient at it, too, if someone had just told me how get rid of the the things. But obviously nobody did, so I divided my time between the three main S's (a proven technique of Middle Earth etiquette)- survival, surveillance, and sulking.

I met Ziva David on a shared and inaccurate hunch that the Mary Sues would still be pretty concentrated near Lothlorien. I'd just barely figured out where Lothlorien even was when she tried to take me out- the only reason I believed her when she said she was a hired assassin for Lady Galadriel and obliged when she asked me to accompany her further.

Our problem then was that we didn't even know where Lady Galadriel was. And when she did turn up, it kind of ruined that mystical image we had of her.

But while I was busy narrating...

* * *

It was late at night when Galadriel struck out on the mission. Caras Galadhon was asleep, and she had shut down robot-Celeborn for the time being. She almost envied canon-Galadriel, who had bailed to Valinor with canon-Celeborn before she had even come into existence. Parody-Galadriel was a rather new concept, she thought to herself.

And parody-Galadriel had made a mistake.

She would readily admit to tampering with the Fourth Wall when she wanted something. She'd let a few people in, smuggled a few out, and found means of travelling to other universes entirely. So it was no wonder a mishap would occur when Peter Jackson announced when his third and final _Hobbit _sequel was coming out and promptly released a teaser.

Sue numbers were already going up before she accidentally released them. She'd tagged each species, but now they were running rampant in Middle Earth and procreating before her eyes. Lothlorien had a fine team to protect the borders (led by her Marchwarden and the leader of the Guild of Good Characters Who Fanfiction Butchered); they didn't need her there.

So being the snarky, parody character she was, she decided to make her own plotline, enlisting the help of Book Faramir (Tolkienmir) and Movie Faramir (Filmamir) to assist her in the quest.

"I don't believe I'm allowing you two to smuggle me out of Lothlorien on four wheelers," she grumbled, climbing onto one of the vehicles that Tauriel had left when she bailed for a Modern AU fic.

The Faramirs shot her a withering look.

"If you didn't have our help, you would have to explain to everyone here that it's your fault the Sues are running loose all over Middle Earth. You're discreetly taking care of the problem."

"Since when was anything you've ever done discreet?"

Filmamir shrugged. "I could ask you the same thing. Why are you dressed like Indiana Jones?" Filmamir asked her, knocking the hat from her head.

"Haldir and Spalko decided it was time for a female classic action hero," Galadriel huffed, fetching the hat and placing it firmly back on her head. "And I didn't want to become a cliche Mary Sue who travels everywhere in a silken gown, so I leapt at the idea."

"Yes, my lady, you really know discreet," muttered Tolkienmir, starting the ignition as Galadriel went through her satchel. All she had brought was a .22 caliber (Spalko's idea) and a blank book that her mirror had informed her between glitches would help to trap the loose Sues.

Galadriel tipped up her hat, enjoying the Old Western feel of her venture. She thought perhaps she had been trapped in Lothlorien for too long, although if she was only now having that realization, after making Tauriel's love affair with Eowyn her business to spy on and tampering with the Fourth Wall, it had clearly been too long to even remember since she had left the Golden Wood.

Twenty minutes outside Lothlorien they stopped for Hitchhikers.

And that is where my story begins.

I don't know what people think when they read Tolkien, or even see the films, but the general agreement is that Galadriel is a very powerful but very righteous Elf queen. Tens of thousands of years old, from a great bloodline of Elves in the West, bearer of Nenya, you know the drill. In short, what we expected was a mystical, powerful, and regal-looking queen who spoke in vague riddles and had a mirror that could show you your past, present, and future.

So basically a female Dumbledore. Or a female Gandalf, but that image makes me uncomfortable.

Either way, what Ziva and I expected of Galadriel was not what we got. Granted, she was still pretty regal, and we were just nighttime hitchhikers, but the fedora felt excessive. Wheeling up on a four wheeler dressed like Indiana Jones with two Faramirs riding beside her… ends didn't exactly meet.

But after some talking her status as Parody Galadriel became evident (mostly by her occasional snarky quips), and we cleared up matters, the most significant being Ziva David. Hired hit man for the Queen of the Golden Wood. Quite a title, if it wasn't being granted to you by a vengeful Sue-slayer out to fix the mess she created in the first place.

Galadriel looked at me skeptically; a ratty, lanky boy who looked to be in his teens and wearing survival gear from an alternate universe, I probably seemed pretty suspicious. But the faint scars on my forehead from acne I couldn't remember gave away quickly that I wasn't a hostile Gary Stu hunting down Arwen or anything of the sort. That, and the fact that I knew details about events which had transpired in another fan fiction a year previous. I could recall the famous tale of Tauriel and the Sue Queen in vast detail, or so it was called now.

And so it was that Galadriel allowed me to join them in their quest to correct her mistakes and rid Middle Earth of pesky Sues and Stus, the first being the classic GDIME and very easy to destroy.

With this one, all you had to do was dose her with reality.

The Sue had wandered the woods outside Lothlorien, bound eventually to stumble upon it and hopefully join the Fellowship of the Ring. Which, in case our dear readers hadn't already deciphered, was _not _about to happen.

"Where are her provisions?" Filmamir muttered grimly.

I laughed quietly at him. "She doesn't need them. She's a Sue, remember? They never address the lack of proper toiletries or food supplies. It's a legit cop out, too; not even ol' PJ covered that. Although I can see the lack of appeal to viewers." I wrinkled my nose in disgust.

Ziva had whipped out a loaded pistol, but Galadriel quickly assured her that there was no need. If this were a video game, the human GDIME was level 1. Easiest to write, easiest to exterminate.

Unfortunately, though, this naive female presence meant that it was my cue to act. She'd react to me, even if I'd had acne once (although in my defense, it was completely gone now). The Suethor was starved of a relationship, so she'd go for anything.

I stepped out into the moonlit glade.

"Hey," I said, with as little sarcasm as I could manage.

Her eyes widened, and by the Valar she was kind of hot. No. I didn't permit these thoughts. Cold and calculated. That's what this is.

"You have any food on you?" I asked her.

Her eyes got even wider. Clearly she'd just only realized that she needed food to stay alive. If I hadn't thrown that curveball, she'd be fine. But this, for the Suethor, was a loose end, and now that she knew it existed, she couldn't tie it up without wrecking the story completely. "N-no…" the Sue stammered, taken aback, then bit her lip in some attempt at seduction. "My name is Alladenial Celestianna. But my nickname is Ally."

"Well that's all very nice, but I don't suppose you've got toilet paper on you, either? All you seem to possess is an extended copy of _The Fellowship of the Ring _DVD. What about toiletries? Your toothbrush?"

And she was out. She turned to dust before my eyes. Why? Because the Suethor had abandoned her and deleted the fic. Only one chapter in, she'd rather delete the story altogether than deal with flames or re-draft.

As I watched, the dust flew into Lady Galadriel's satchel, where a leather-bound book stuck out of the top.

"It's a field guide," she explained to me, tipping her fedora again. It was becoming a habit, apparently. "Galadriel's Field Guide to Mary Sues and Gary Stus. It must be present to recapture the essence of each species of Sue or Stu (although Sues are far more common)."

She opened the book, climbing out of her four wheeler and laying it down in the clearing, where lettering was just beginning to appear under the heading of "classic GDIME."

_Ally stared at the strange boy, a sudden fear striking her heart. What would she do without a hairbrush or a toothbrush? What would she do without her toiletries? And suddenly she felt STARVING._

"What's with the all-caps?" asked Ziva, drawing her eyebrows together.

Galadriel smirked. "It's in the Suethor's original prose. For humor's sake."

_Her beautiful purple eyes glittering in the moonlight, she felt her fingers being to melt like shining, pale slender candlesticks, and her lovely, flowing dress turn to sand. She exploded in a flash of the most beautiful light Middle Earth had ever seen, and was never seen again. _

_Thank the Valar._

Galadriel chuckled lightly. "Okay, maybe I added that last bit."

**Rough translation of Teithariel: daughter of writing. Even more rough- daughter of the plot line. Which was what I was kind of going for there.**

**Hope you enjoyed! More chapters to come, and please do review. Max will get so bored if he doesn't have something to read in his spare time, and since I don't know him very well yet I don't know what he likes to destroy when he gets bored. New characters are like that, unfortunately. **

**Anyways, this will be mostly a bunch of chronological one-shots or two-shots or even three-shots, each dealing with the destruction of one Sue. There will be collective character development, and eventual pairings and such. But it's not just one continuous story. Each chapter covers a new Sue species, so to speak.**


	2. With Sincere Apologies to Adele Dazeem

**Well hi again, dear readers! The delay has been long, but I present to you the second chapter of this crazy mess. I'd like to establish here and now that the Mary Sue names in question are chosen deliberately, but any references to real character names in ongoing fanfics are not purposeful. Also, some of them will be butchered Elvish. Feel free to correct my Elvish, but I did butcher it deliberately for the effect.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Tolkien. Or Disney. Or Marvel. Although technically if I owned Disney I would own Marvel. But if I were in charge Cinderella would have gone and joined Shield to take charge in her life instead of relying on magic. Guns are far more reliable than magic in the long run. Take it from Tauriel and Eowyn. **

_Frozen Amnesiac Sue: Found either shivering and memoryless on the slopes of Caradhras wearing a remarkably form-fitting dress that only the Valar know where she got, or frozen into a block of ice that the Fellowship has to cleave with their weapons to break and free her from, this Sue snags her man of choice by roping them into her quest to cure her amnesia and unlock the magical powers she now possesses._

_ Sub-species: A particular sub-species of Frozen Amnesiac, discovered in November of 2013, often possesses the magical ability to control ice and snow for no discernable reason. Now thought to be the result of a genetic mutation in the fic due to the Suethor's overexposure to Disney's "Frozen."_

* * *

I'm going to insist right now that this wasn't my idea. I'm not, by any standards, what one would call 'outdoorsy.' Which probably made Middle Earth a pretty hard place to live in, but at least I'd gotten out of the serious hiking.

Except, as Galadriel had sardonically spelled out for me when we finally got to Azanulbizar, ATVs wouldn't get them through Caradhras. Because, as she informed me, "it's a glacier. The pass will still be covered with snow, and the ATVs won't be able to operate on the paths we're taking." Apparently the Lady of the Golden Wood did climate research.

"How do you know what the terrain limits are for an ATV?" I demanded, doing my best to avoid the prospect of walking up a glacier.

Galadriel glared at me. "This isn't just a bloody costume, Max. Who do you think test-drove those things while they were in Lothlorien? I studied the limits of all-terrain vehicles extensively planning this excursion."

"Only because you were bored," grumbled Filmamir, "We were the ones who fetched it from the Anduin because you wanted to see if it would drive all the way across."

"And we were the ones who got it down from that tree," piped up Tolkienmir.

"Never mind how you managed to crash it up there."

Filmamir threw me a sidelong glance. "She's remarkably good at crashing things," he said in a stage-whisper, earning him another hard glare from Galadriel.

"Driving skills aside," Ziva spoke up from the other ATV, covering it with fallen branches so as to hide it from hostile passerby, "It won't be as bad as you think." She held up two sets of skis and skins. My mouth fell open.

Galadriel smirked, a peculiar expression on such a regal face. "I did a good bit of preparing for this quest," she said smugly.

One thing you should know about Parody Galadriel- she looks exactly like canon-Galadriel, but she's got an acerbic tongue and the witty, self-satisfied bearing of a classic action character. Think Harrison Ford (of course) meets Sigourney Weaver meets _Men in Black._ Now throw a sword, a few Mary Sues, a human brain-spawn, an assassin, and a little bit of Faramir-cest into the mix. Instant chaos.

We strapped the skis to the packs Ziva had tossed to each of us- Galadriel really _had _thought of everything- and set out toward the Pass of Caradhras.

A few hours into the hike, I was already on the verge of collapse. "Tell me again," I huffed, lugging up the trail behind Filmamir "why we couldn't just go through the Gap of Rohan?"

Galadriel threw me a scathing look over her shoulder as she adjusted her hat. She looked quite a character- still wearing the stupid fedora even as we trekked up Caradhras on skis.

"We will not find the Sue if we take the Gap of Rohan!" she called back to me.

"You haven't even told us which Mary-Sue we're going after!"

Filmamir and Tolkien shared a glance in front of me. "He's got a point!" they shouted to her in unison, where she was deep in conversation with her hired assassin.

Rolling her eyes, Ziva muttered something to Galadriel and they stopped, Galadriel pulling her field guide out of her backpack. She motioned for the company to gather around as she flipped through it, past the page with the Classic GDIME that they had taken out on the borders of Lothlorien.

Narrowing her eyes, Galadriel pointed to a blank page headed _Frozen Amnesiac. _"This is the one," she said darkly. The image was of an etherreally beautiful, dark-haired young woman lying in the snow like a dead princess.

"Well I'll be darned," I muttered. "It's Snow White."

"Hilarious," Tolkienmir deadpanned.

"This, gentleman..." Galadriel began, followed by a loud cough from Ziva, "...and hired hit-woman, is a peculiar species of Mary Sue that the Fellowship either finds lying unconscious in the snow or cryogenically frozen for a thousand years. That way she looks sixteen but is actually the perfect age to fall in love with Legolas."

"That's a very new-agey species of Sue," I commented grimly.

Galadriel shrugged. "Well most of them don't understand how to cryogenically freeze a corpse. It usually requires liquid nitrogen and the proper equipment to preserve them for re-awakening (which is really only hypothetical at this stage anyway), although technically speaking you could take DNA from one of the frozen Sues and use it to clone them in a controlled environment."

Tolkienmir lifted a skeptical eyebrow at Galadriel. "Are you speaking from experience or from marathoning crime dramas?"

"I _have _been thrown into a murder mystery AU before."

"As the detective or the murderer?"

She offered only a sly half-smirk in response. "The point is, I am well versed in the worlds beyond my own. And rather immersed in the possibilities of science."

I shook my head in disbelief. "You are _so _out-of-character."

"I still retain my mystery, do I not?" she inquired, her face masked with false innocence. Then she schooled her features into the appearance of a stern scholar and returned her attention to the book. "The Sue in question is frozen in time, with no memory of where she came from. Usually that allows a nice, tragic back story to unravel as she develops a relationship with Aragorn or Legolas. Usually Legolas, though. She also generally possesses some form of magical power, so we must be careful." She closed the field guide and stuffed it back into her rucksack. "Any more questions?"

There was a murmur of assent amongst us as we slung our packs back on. "From here," said Ziva, "shouldn't we use the skis? The snow is growing deeper."

So we all strapped on our skis, and my misery heightened further. I am an intellectual, thank you very much. I prefer not to engage in physically strenuous activities if I can avoid it. I mean, I've only ever existed intellectually anyway, in the dimension within the Fourth Wall until it collapsed and left me floundering in Middle Earth with a crazy Elf queen, an ex-Mossad assassin, and the Faramirs. I've never skied before, and lemme tell you, it's not pleasant if you've never had prior experience. I'm sure Galadriel figure out how to use the things way back when she was crashing ATVs and planning out this whole Valar-forsaken trek that she's treating like a vacation.

Really, I didn't know the appeal that 10th Walkers found in trekking around a snow-capped mountain with a bunch of scraggly males. And, of course, Legolas, but his status as male was just about as debatable as his status as 'scraggly' in my opinion. Still, whatever was so attractive to them about this venture was beyond my understanding. Wiping the sweat from my brow, I shed my cloak and kept walking, because contrary to popular belief, walking in the snow does not cancel out the effects of sunlight and overexertion.

Eventually we stopped for the night in a small overhang free of snow, after what had felt like weeks trudging up the stupid glacier on wooden sticks. Galadriel pulled neatly wrapped packages of lembas from her rucksack, handing them around to each of us.

Also contrary to popular belief, lembas isn't as good as the Elves make it out to be. It's dry and crumbly like smashed crackers wet down in a stream and packed together with all natural peanut butter; you know, the kind that doesn't have any sugar in it. So basically it looks like astronaut oatmeal and tastes like craft glue. Real great, huh?

"Relax," Tolkienmir said, grinning as I choked it down. He reached into his pack and pulled out the most beautiful thing I had seen during my short time in Middle Earth: instant backcountry meals. We lit a fire quite efficiently despite out lack of matches (the things you can do with a little bit of motivation), holding out our instant meals and trying to heat them.

Turns out, plastic melts a lot more easily than food heats. And cold instant-meals are just not meant to be eaten.

But at the point, Galadriel decided to hold out on us and produced three packages of Jet-puff marshmallows. Marshmallows were a delicacy in Lorien, I guess. We stuck them on the ends of our ski poles and fried them until they were black. Charred sugar had never tasted so good.

Galadriel herself took one bite and reacted the same way I had when I'd tasted the lembas bread. "What dark spawn of Morgoth _is _this stuff?" she grumbled.

Filmamir snickered. "You're the one who brought it."

"I found them in the secret inter-universe food supply that you thought you were being discreet about," Galadriel said matter-of-factly, to which the Faramirs appeared quite taken-aback. "Now would you care to explain to me the origin of this horrific concoction?"

"Sugar and preservatives, a gift from my world," Ziva chuckled, swallowing her own marshmallow and reaching for the bag with a mischievous partial smile. She tossed a second on into the flames. "This is always a party trick."

Galadriel watched with disgusted fascination as the Marshmallow Ziva had thrown into the fire blackened and expanded, growing like an alien blob from the bad science fiction movies Spalko had introduced her to in the past months. Then a bubble of air popped in it, and it shrunk, charred and crinkly, into a shriveled ball of ash and fake sugar.

The Faramirs found the whole spectacle to be hilarious, although I'm not sure whether they were more amused by the marshmallow or by the horrified but completely captivated expression on Galadriel's face. Finally the Elf cringed and handed Ziva her ski pole, a second marshmallow on the end. "Here," she said grimly, "Please, keep that as far away from me as possible."

Just as we were about to douse the fire and climb into our respective sleeping bags (when Galadriel had said she was prepared, she wasn't kidding), a harsh crack sounded above our heads. I looked up just in time to see a huge block of ice break off from the cliffs and land in the snow just outside our cave, rattling the rocks and causing Filmamir to scream like his life depended on it.

"Wuss," Tolkienmir mumbled grudgingly as we approached the fallen piece of the mountain. The ice was blue and glittery, no specks of dirt visible in it. Yet I couldn't believe our luck. Because frozen into the block of ice was none other than a young woman, with one boot-clad foot sticking out of her freezing prison.

Mentally, I checked off the physical traits- silken hair as black as a night with no stars, delicate facial features like that of an Elf (so to speak- Galadriel's face with the fedora and the piercing eyes looks less 'delicate lady' and more 'kick-ass, old-fashioned private eye.'), a figure-hugging gown that she would _not _be wearing had she been traveling through Caradhras, no matter the time of year she'd been frozen, and large, round *ahem* eyes.

"How do we get her out?" I asked Galadriel, who was examining the ice block carefully from all sides.

"I can shoot her through it," said Ziva proudly, but Galadriel shook her head.

"That will do us no good," she observed. "Besides, I think we all know the easiest way of getting her out." She looked pointedly at the Faramirs.

"Key?" requested Filmamir, turning to his counterpart.

Tolkienmir sang a note, and Filmamir cleared his throat, taking a deep breath before allowing the melody to burst forth. "Let it go! Let it-"

The ice cracked open, and the Sue leapt to her feet, the cursed song tumbling melodiously from her full lips as snowflakes danced from her fingertips. I covered my ears as quickly as possible. The Sue was obviously a beautiful singer, but I had heard that song too many times for it to do anything other than make my ears bleed.

I looked around to find that everyone else had done the same, except for Ziva, who was fingering the handgun at her hip. Galadriel was eyeing the gun as well, although looking back I'm not sure it was the handgun she was staring at or just the assassin in general.

Finally, the Valardamned tune came to an end and the Sue stopped singing, instead offering up a generous display of her sparkling Disney-based ice powers. If you asked me (and probably anyone in our company) who was a better snow queen, we would all say Jadis, although I'm pretty sure only Galadriel and Faramirs know her personally from their escapades with the Guild of Characters Who Fanfiction has Butchered (the GCWFHB- also known as Middle Earth's most useless acronym).

"Who are you?" the Sue demanded. "What have you done with Legolas?"

"See, you're a bit early for the Fellowship of the Ring," Galadriel informed her dryly, reaching for the Field Guide in her rucksack.

"Oh! I do hope I have not come upon servants of the Dark Lord!"

Galadriel cocked an eyebrow. "Do I look like an Orc to you?"

"You resemble Lady Galadriel, but the true Lady of the Wood would not dare dress so uncharacteristically and unfeminine!" the Sue exclaimed.

Galadriel glared fiercely. "This is _not _unfeminine!" she hissed, reaching over for Ziva's gun. Ziva swatted her hand away from the firearm.

"If I don't get to shoot her, neither do you," growled the former Mossad agent.

"Why would you dare to shoot me?" The Sue asked innocently. "I am only Celandrennial Ithilierian! The last Snowmoon-Sister of Middle Earth! Why, I don't even remember my past, aside from the trauma it caused me."

I rolled my eyes. Her back story didn't even make sense, and her dialogue was horrendous. One of us had to do something.

"Come with me, my dear Celandrennial," said Filmamir, stepping forward, and her eyes lit up. Apparently she recognized him at least a little bit.

"Oh, thank you, kind Lord Faramir. Why, what are you doing in these parts?" she asked as he took her hand. Over his shoulder, he made desperate eye contact with Galadriel. Suddenly, the Elf's eyes lit up, as if a comic light bulb had appeared over her head with an idea.

She addressed the Sue with as much saccharin as possible. "Lady Celandrennial, it is a miracle you're still alive. Not even Elf magic can reverse the process of hypothermia."

The Sue's wide eyes flickered with worry at a little dose of reality.

"In fact," Galadriel continued, "most studies say that a subject buried in snow lasts about fifteen minutes before oxygen runs low, hypothermia sets in, and chances of survival decrease drastically. It must be faster with ice, don't you think? Not to mention that the idea of cryogenically freezing a body for a thousand years before allowing them to regenerate is purely speculation, and the process requires liquid nitrogen. The only special case is the Marvel universe, of course, and at the time of that debacle, Disney hadn't yet bought Marvel. Otherwise, it's entirely impossible for you to be here, even with magic. No magic in Middle Earth is capable of reversing death unless the Valar grant it, and only has that happened historically to a select few, Gandalf being the last. Unless you've slain a Balrog, which you certainly don't appear to have done, then you can't have returned from the dead, and cryogenics does not apply under these circumstances."

By the time Galadriel had finished ranting, the Sue was nothing more than a pile of animated snowflakes.

"She wasn't even a legitimate Disney character," I grumbled as Galadriel dusted off her hands with a smug look on her face.

"Well the Suethor had obviously taken inspiration from Disney, which is often a world based entirely on illogic, so providing her with a scientific explanation as to how there's no possible way for her to be alive with the story provided for her seemed to be the best way to kill her off. Two Sues down, too many more to go." She opened the book and read the Sue's page- newly filled- to the rest of us.

_Celandrennial opened her mouth in protest to the stream of scientific blasphemy, but her rosy, plush lips could not speak. Her lavender violet-blue eyes glistened in fear as she felt her body begin to tingle. She tried to summon her powers over all the snow of Middle Earth, but failed. Her remarkable powers were gone. She could not even sing!_

_Slowly, she dissolved; a physically painless process but as psychologically damaging as a bad writer's first flame. The Suethor would survive, but her creation was no more. _

_The great evil of the frozen amnesiac Mary Sue, second only to the evil of marshmallows, had been defeated._

I turned to Galadriel. "Real pleased with yourself, aren't you?"

**Hope you enjoyed! Please review :) Remember to always make potato chips, not air. Although that's my last running plea, so someone should send me some more creative ways of begging for reviews.**


	3. The Return of The Plot

**Well, it's been a nice long hiatus full of the real world and other such things. Less than a month before Peter Jackson's final Middle Earth movie is released, and we finally get to see Galadriel go to battle. This particular chapter is inspired by the cult following of Gandalf/Galadriel shippers out there. Not to say that Haldir/Spalko and Tauriel/Eowyn make canonical sense, but none of them will have Mary Sue children. So I think I'm kind of in the clear.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but my wild OC brain-spawn. I don't own Tolkien, or NCIS, or really anything. Nothing. Nada. Although if someone wants to buy me the rights to NCIS so I could bring back Ziva, that would be great. Also I'd love the rights to Tolkien. Galadriel must get a little bored in Lothlorien from time to time. And I could settle the Book Faramir-Movie Faramir debates for good.  
**

_The Gandalf/Galadriel Sue: This species of Mary Sue stems entirely from movieverse post-2012 and is the alternate universe love-child of Gandalf and Galadriel, usually born during a time period when Gandalf looked "young," so the author feels less dirty writing her fic. She is always both unrealistically powerful and immortal, so that she is able to marry Legolas without pesky complications like dying._

"Wait- where are we going?" Galadriel hadn't said a word to us since we'd gotten up this morning besides a demand that we "hurry our lazy arses up before the next Sue gets too far into the story for her chaos to be undone."

"The Plains of Rohan," Filmamir whispered into my ear from behind me.

Tolkienmir muttered into my other ear, "we saw the map on her laptop."

"Why Rohan?"

"Apparently a Mary Sue so dangerous cropped up there recently that we can't avoid it any longer. And we know Galadriel's been trying her best to avoid it. She was staring at some badfic for hours in the ATV and reading the last few chapters of it before we captured that awful Disney subspecies."

I turned around to look at them, puzzled. We had come off the glacier early this morning and botched our skis, but someone had stolen the four wheelers, and Galadriel had no intention of returning to Lothlorien until every Sue she had released was dead.

"Do you know which species this one is?"

Filmamir shook his head.

"No idea," said Tolkienmir.

"I, for one," Ziva piped up from behind us, "would appreciate if the Lady Galadriel would offer us explanations of which Sue we're taking down before we depart. I can safely say that as an assassin, my employers usually brief me on who I am hunting, their lifestyle, and their recent whereabouts."

"Maybe this one hits a little close to home," suggested Tolkienmir. "I mean, I haven't seen Galadriel in many odd pairings, although ficcers have taken to shipping her with Aredhel and Luthien in the _Silmarillion _fics."

"We don't deal with _Silmarillion_, remember?" said Filmamir.

I scrunched my eyebrows together in confusion. "Why not?"

"That's in the domain of the canon characters," Tolkienmir answered, "because the thing's so bloody complicated no one wants to send in an AU character and risk screwing everyone over. I mean, not that a great deal of them didn't get screwed over in canon, just look at Turin, but that's neither here nor there. The point is, AU characters don't like to get involved in stuff that messy, because too many variables are involved."

Well that made a twisted sort of sense. Of course, in terms of getting involved in messy business, the AU universe I was stuck in contained two versions of Faramir shipped with each other, Parody Galadriel, three NCIS characters, a Haldir/Spalko sub-plot, and a gazillion Mary Sues on the loose. Sense was out of the picture by now.

"Hurry up, Max," Galadriel called over her shoulder.

"Me?" I whined. "What about the Faramirs and Ziva?"

Galadriel snorted disbelievingly. "There is little I can force the Faramirs to do. They were witnesses to too many stupid decisions I've made in the past year."

That got me listening. "Like what?"

"You mean aside from accidentally releasing every known species of Mary Sue into Middle Earth like a virus? You are truly holding out on us." Ziva sounded quite curious. "What delicious scandals does the Lady of the Wood have in her repertoire?"

"Yes," agreed the Faramirs, smirking. Filmamir wiggled his eyebrows. "What dirty secrets do you have that we don't already know?"

"Wouldn't you like to find out," Galadriel growled at them. She'd been far more irritable since we had begun to hunt down the next Mary Sue. "And for the record, nothing."

"And the Sue we're hunting has nothing to do with you?"

My eyebrows shot up. The Faramirs were quite bold in their questioning, but clearly they had blackmail material on Galadriel, which, If I were being honest with myself, I really wanted to know more about.

"The Sue we are currently hunting is a dangerous movieverse species," said Galadriel, this time not even bothering to turn around. Her personal agenda seemed to be her priority, and we didn't know enough about Mary Sues to contradict her. Not to mention she was the only one who knew her way around this Valarforsaken mountain.

The fic-jumpers didn't joke when they said she was smart. I'd bet anything she planned to take out this one particular Sue before she left Lorien. So she was either really stubborn or a total psychopath, to fixate on one Mary Sue in particular.

Or I was just overreacting. I looked over my shoulder at the Faramirs. "Is she always like this?"

They nodded in unison.

"Is she a sociopath?"

"We had a theory," began Tolkienmir.

Filmamir smirked. "That she hijacked a _Sherlock _fan fiction and hasn't been the same since. But she generally has a reason for hunting down the Sues in the order she does. We just have to wait and find out."

Ziva grimaced. "And you just _trust _her?"

"The Lady Galadriel is righteous and worthy of trust from folk like us. She would not deliberately lead us astray. Also we have too much dirt on her not to trust her."

"So I've noticed," said Ziva dryly. "Maybe I should stop talking to you three and start talking to the one person who truly understands Galadriel: herself."

"How beautifully soppy," I muttered under my breath.

"You're missing the point," Galadriel called over her shoulder again.

"Well what _is _the point then? Do we always have to nag you this much before you tell us what Sue we're going after, or are you going to pull a Spalko and hold out 'til Chapter 11 and then spew a few pages of cynical back story based on the shitty plot twists of your own fanfic?"

Tolkienmir leaned over and muttered, "How do you know about that?"

I rolled my eyes. "I'm the brain spawn of the Fourth Wall, remember? It's my _job _to read up on stuff like this."

"Then why don't you read up on Galadriel? You know stuff. Can't you like search the wiring of your own brain until you find something worth your time?"

"Little bit scared of her," I admitted sheepishly. "You know her as the Lady of Light; I know her as the lady of multi-universe connections, a shipping complex, and a penchant for weird fan fics."

"Ah," said Filmamir, "that's where you're wrong. We know her as the lady of unnecessary interference in the romantic conquests of others."

"Oh, really?" inquired Galadriel. "And if I did not interfere with the "romantic conquests" of your Mary Sues, where do you suspect you would be at the moment?"

Filmamir didn't answer.

"You've made your point," Tolkienmir said quickly, before Galadriel could recall another detail.

"Good. Because we have arrived at our destination."

I hurried forward, looking over the mountainside. Below us lay the plains of Rohan; Middle Earth's Wyoming, except instead of driving through in a few hours, you had to walk through it over the course of days. And camped out on the vast expanse of Rohan, lighting fires despite the threat of attack, were four tiny figures.

"Is that-"

"The Fellowship," confirmed Lady Galadriel, her voice grim. "Not our Fellowship, of course, but a fan's rendition of the Fellowship revolving around our Suethor's imagination. Movieverse, of course, except Legolas gets far too much screen time, and Aragorn's only character development is unwashed, heir of Isildur, has the hots for Arwen. Gimil… well he's pretty much mute. Similar in character structure to robot-Celeborn."

"So this version of Aragorn and Legolas won't end up in a pairing?"

"Honestly, I've seen a hundred versions of the three companions based around this story," Galadriel said with obvious distaste toward the Suethors. "Legolas never seems any less gay to me. Or he's agender, but you'd have to take that up with someone knows his back story better than I do. Aragorn… well he swings back and forth. Sometimes he's in a committed relationship with whichever version of Arwen- usually a very passive one- is involved in the fic. Other times, though, he's just begging for a slash sub-plot."

I still didn't see what this had to do with Galadriel. Or at least, I didn't until we got a little closer. The Sue- it looked exactly like her. Of course, it also had subtle hints of Chris Pine and Benedict Cumberbatch in its face, and at that moment I realized what the Suethor had been going for with her monstrous creation.

"It's a-"

"Indeed it is." The Faramirs sounded quite smug staring at the Mary Sue's flawless form from behind an outcropping of rock.

"Oh, this is going to be fun!" Tolkienmir flung his arm over Filmamir's shoulders and grinned wildly.

"This Sue," Galadriel began, in her best cop voice, "is the most dangerous Mary Sue we have yet faced. That, obviously, is not saying a great deal, seeing as we have only dealt with two species, but this one… runs deeper. This species of Sue is convinced that is is the… ahem… offspring of AU!Young Gandalf (cursed to remain in an aged state until the fall of Sauron) and… myself." She choked slightly on the words as they came out of her mouth, and I had to stop myself from laughing aloud.

"I can't wait to meet AU!Galadriel," I whispered to Filmamir.

"Hush," Ziva snapped. "This is clearly a traumatic experience for her."

Galadriel snorted, but she seemed a bit endeared through her embarrassment, seeing as the Faramirs and I had been nagging her incessantly since our journey began. She set down her backpack and unloaded the laptop.

"The Sue in question is a highly dangerous species with the ability to control both fire and ice. She's a _Last Airbender _rehash who- yes, Tolkienmir?"

"Cartoon or gritty live-action remake?"

"The remake."

There was collective gasp of horror amongst the group.

"I know," said Galadriel grimly. "Nearly unbearable as it is. She holds the belief that she is the daughter of myself and Young!Gandalf, a terrifying concept even without the romantic sub-plot. Undoubtedly at some point the Suethor's version of me will sacrifice herself to save her Sue's life. All we need to do is prevent that self-sacrifice from taking place."

I grimaced at the implications. "But what about the Suethor's Fellowship?"

Galadriel nodded to Ziva, who patted the pistol on her belt.

"They never truly die," Ziva said to us, "but it doesn't hurt to take them out as a precaution. It's a similar concept to the mythological monsters from the _Percy Jackson and the Olympians _books. Except they're about the same quality as the movie adaptation."

Another collective gasp of horror.

Galadriel looked over each one of us. "At any rate, Ziva can take them out quickly. I'm a trained professional. Max and Faramirs, you'll kidnap the Sue and return her here, where I will have the materials necessary to kill her prepared. Clear?"

We all nodded at the briefing. Parody Galadriel was clearly a by-product of her own obsession with cop shows. Ziva's presence was a side effect of the obsession.

The Faramirs moved toward the group with surprising stealth, given that earlier they had been snickering and elbowing each other at Galadriel's expense. I followed them closely, sticking to boulders, watching Ziva position herself with the pistol at close enough range for an accurate shot but far enough that she could hid behind a small outcropping. Galadriel had disappeared all together. Of course she had. Two gunshots rang out, and Aragorn and Legolas dropped like flies.

"What about Gimli?" I whispered to Tolkienmir.

"Gimli's a non-entity in this fic with the Sue around. Without the Sue, whoever's plotfilling for him might have a decent shot at a life. He wouldn't object to us kidnapping the Sue at all. He'll just kind of stand there."

Certainly seemed that way, given that Suethor-Gimli was just standing around blinking as if his two companions hadn't just been shot.

"So leave him alone?"

"Yeah."

We slunk forward. If Suethor-Galadriel was about to show up and sacrifice her life for this insufferable monster, we had to act quickly.

"You go," said Filmamir, shoving me forward.

"Me?" I panicked, gripping his arm.

Tolkienmir chuckled. "Yeah, you, kid."

"I am not a-"

"We're so obviously in a committed relationship with each other that it wouldn't be worth trying to seduce the Sue."

"Hold on a moment, you want me to _seduce _her?"

They nodded in unison.

"Just act badass," said Filmamir.

"And preferably experienced."

"Experienced? Experience with _what_?"

They shot sly glances at each other.

Oh.

Valar, why did I sign up for this?

I stepped out from behind the boulder, hoping to catch the Sue unawares, but three seconds into my approach, I stepped on a rock and went down. It turned around, eyes wide and beautiful, her face so like Galadriel's, yet not severe enough to be hers, features too soft and delicate, her eyes too wide and rounded and weirdly purple. Almost too beautiful to be-

Holy mother of dead fandoms, what was happening to me?

I shook myself out of it, doing my best not to look the Sue in the eye. Maybe it really was like the monsters of Mythology; Medusa, to be precise. Just don't look it in the eye or else turn to a stone statue on the spot.

This was it. I was going to die. I was going to die seducing a Mary Sue. I was going to die cold and alone with probably only half my clothes on. Maybe none at all.

I opened my eyes, and there was a sword at my throat. Well, maybe I would die fully clothed after all. That's at least a step up.

"Who are you?" the Sue demanded, its sparkling violet eyes narrowed into what could only be described as a Barbie-glare.

"I… am…" Crap. I hadn't thought about this part. "My name is…" I glanced helplessly over the Sue's shoulder at the Faramirs, who were a few meters behind her gesturing wildly, trying to form a name with their hands. "Eeerrrd...Eedword…. Edward!" I almost shouted, and Tolkienmir gave me a thumbs up. Okay, what were some other attractive male characters that the Sue would probably know? "Edward Leg-no- Greenleaf Potter. Yes. Edward Greenleaf Potter."

The sword lowered immediately, and her-its- glare turned into a flirtatious smile. _Get me out of here, _I willed the Faramirs. Thankfully, they chose that moment to rush in and jump the Sue. I followed suit, grabbing its wrists and pinning them behind its back like I was making an arrest. Galadriel's cop show briefing had gotten to us all. The Faramirs brushed themselves off, and hauled the Sue to her feet.

"Well…" said Tolkienmir lightly, blowing a strand of dark hair out of his eyes. "that was entertaining."

We lugged her, hands bound together so she couldn't use any of that Avatar remake magic to escape, back to where Galadriel had set up her laptop. When we got there, Galadriel was nowhere to be seen. Her laptop lay open on the grass.

"Thank the Valar you are back!" Ziva breathed, rushing forward to take the Sue off our hands. "We have a problem." She jerked her head to the left. We followed her gaze, only to see Galadriel on a nearby hillside, fighting… Galadriel.

"Is that Parody Galadriel fighting Suethor Galadriel?" I asked, narrowing my eyes for a better look and assuming that the one with the hat was ours. "We've got to get over there."

Ziva shook her head. "No. We just have to take out the Sue."

"We can't, remember?" said Tolkienmir. "If we try before Suethor Galadriel is gone, she'll somehow manage to make a sacrifice for the Sue. It's woven directly into the Suethor's plotline." He gestured to the struggling damsel in Ziva's grip.

"So what, we just make popcorn and watch two Galadriels duke it out until one of them is gone, and we can kill our prisoner?" I threw my arms up. "We have to do something!"

Ziva shrugged. "Not necessarily," she said, and we watched as Parody Galadriel whipped a syringe out of her pocket and stuck Suethor Galadriel in the arm, the latter collapsing into a heap. She shook out the syringe, blew the tip as if it were a gun, and began to march back to us triumphantly, like a victorious general marching back from battle.

"What was that?" Ziva demanded upon our companion's return, her eyes drifting to the syringe still in Galadriel's hand.

"I injected her with canon. She'll wake up in a few hours and remember that she should be in Lothlorien, that she doesn't really have a daughter with Gandalf, and that she should probably be fighting against the romantic interpretation of their relationship in the films. The Valar know we could use one more person for that cause."

"That's all well and dandy, but what about the Sue?" I watched our captive continue to fight against Ziva's hold, to no avail.

Galadriel looked up to the sky smugly. "Just wait." On cue, an arrow sailed out of nowhere and struck the Mary Sue in the chest. She disintegrated on the spot.

"What was that?"

Galadriel simply offered me a sly smile. "That, dear Max, was The Plot. With no one to give their life to for her, our Mary Sue was bound to die at some point. But we're six pages into the chapter, and The Plot needs a coffee break. It thought better to end her quickly."

So the legendary Plot was still running after all. That is, until the Valar inevitably released another upgrade that they claimed was more efficient but only made things a thousand times more complicated so no one could find anything, much less accomplish their goal.

Galadriel opened up the Field Guide of Mary Sues, just as the new page formed.

_Elenderiel felt the arrow pierce her heart, her beautiful violet-lavendar eyes tearing up as her body collapsed into dust. Her vague, traumatic past flashed through her head, and she remembered at that moment her true parentage._

_But her true parentage was canonically impossible, and her boyfriend had just been shot, and she was bound to die sooner or later, always throwing herself into life-threatening situations under the pretense of selfless courage and martyrdom. _

_The Gandalf-Galadriel Sue was defeated, and Galadriel was saved a traumatic back story of implanted memories in Chapter 11._

_And thus the Fellowship of the Fourth Wall rejoiced, and The Plot took a coffee break._

**First of all, the ambiguity as to whether the Sue is a 'she' or an 'it' was completely intentional. Also, I'm not too dignified to beg for reviews. So here's me begging for reviews. And if there's a particular species of Mary Sue you want to see destroyed, please put it in a review or a PM. The Plot can't run everything by itself.**


	4. Always Know Where Your Towel Is

**Well, happy holidays to everyone. Wanted to get this up before Christmas, but I didn't have time. Jet lag is a nasty thing. Plus I've been throwing a great deal of effort into my more serious fic at the moment, and I kind of left these guys hanging. Apologies will be doled out at the end of the show with a side of leftover stale Christmas cookies. This is Part 1 of the Crime Drama Sue section, so buckle up. **

**Disclaimer: Don't own Middle Earth, _Doctor Who_, or the _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, _although I really wish I did. Follow-up question: Is the movie adaptation of that worth watching? Because I've come across a variety of opinions.**

_Part 1_

_Crime Drama Sue: A practical excuse to ship a Mary Sue with a significant canon character. By changing everything about the universe the story is set in, the Suethor hopes that no one will berate her for changing one simple pairing. Plus it gives the Sue an excuse to pack heat._

Between Galadriel, Ziva, and the Faramirs, you could cut the sexual tension with a knife. Now, I'm not one for romance, but I honestly wished they would all just find a pub and hook up in a drunken stupor so I wouldn't have to deal with this anymore.

After all, they say alcohol is a truth serum.

Personally, I think a near death experience is the ultimate truth serum (cop out or otherwise). But another perfectly valid answer would be aliens. Haughty, British, overrated aliens and the information they disclose to their kidnappers.

However, before I tell this story, a little disclaimer. Yeah, I know, we usually leave these things for the author, but I think in this case it's necessary. In regaling readers with the story of our genius* plan, I fully acknowledge that this was entirely Galadriel's idea, and so everything that happens afterward is therefore her fault.

It begins like every proper story- with a seemingly unsolvable problem and an unlikely group of jackasses trying to solve said problem.

More specifically, it begins with Ziva teaching Galadriel how to use an NCIS-issued pistol, because apparently despite all her knowledge of AU universes, Galadriel had come to the conclusion that the bigger the weapon, the better, and only ever researched how to fire a deer-hunting rifle. I thought those particular skills would come in handy right about now, seeing as all we had left in our food stash were marshmallows and lembas bread, but the Lady of the Golden Wood disagreed.

Thus, the Faramirs looked on in amusement, offering up snide remarks as Galadriel sturdied herself and aimed the pistol at a dead tree. This _is_ an Elf we're talking about- she wouldn't hit a live one, although Filmamir did suggest she shag it, to which Tolkienmir followed up with the more appealing suggestion that she shag the resident assassin, who currently had her arms wrapped around Galadriel's to "steady her hands on the gun."

Steady her hands my ass. Much as I hated to admit it, Tolkienmir had a point. The UST was sparking so violently off them I swear we could have lit a signal fire then and there and waited for the Obscenely Huge Flying Eagle Rescue Squad to carry us wherever we needed to go.

Galadriel fired off a shot at the tree carcass, and her face spread into a grin I would really rather not have been subject to. Ziva clapped her on the back and muttered, "Nice shot," into her ear and for a moment I swore to the Valar she was going to kiss her cheek and a UST bomb was going to explode in the general vicinity.

"So are Indiana Pointy-Ears and Agent Romanoff done playing tease, or should we just strike out and kill the Sues on our own?" piped up Tolkienmir. A part of me really wished I'd said that; it put voice to my thoughts pretty well, but I was still too afraid of Galadriel's power to really challenge her head on. The Faramirs, of course, were shameless. Probably came from having spent so much time in the Golden Wood gathering dirt on the Lady of Light.

"Ahem," Ziva cleared her throat, letting go of Galadriel's shoulders and glancing awkwardly to the side. "Indeed, we should probably be hunting for the next Sue."

I leaned against a boulder. "Well, nothing seems particularly urgent right now; what say we just take a break for a while? Find someplace nice and settle down, preferrably some modern AU, with a swimming pool, comfortable beds and indoor plumbing." As I mentioned earlier, I'm not much of an outdoors person. I was quite literally itching to get out of the plains.

The grass dragged against my knees and had me scratching them all day long, the fields were painfully exposed, and I felt like I inhaled a dozen insects with every breath. I was probably covered in bites, and despite all her careful planning, Galadriel hadn't thought to pack a bottle of bug spray.

"Modern AU, huh?" That seemed to catch the Filmamir's attention.

Tolkienmir's eyes lit up, and I knew he'd gotten an idea that would either save us all, doom us all, or both. "Why, we do have some friends living it up in a modern AU. I don't believe we've paid them a visit recently."

"Yes," said Galadriel, "by their request."

Tolkienmir pouted. "What did we ever do to them?"

"Well, our head interrogator bribed their cat, stole their nachos, and almost gave birth in the NCIS bullpen. I think it's safe to say we pissed them off a little bit."

"Sorry to butt in," I said, eyeing Galadriel and the Faramirs, "but there are some of us here who haven't a clue what you're talking about."

Ziva nodded her agreement.

"You do remember Tauriel and Eowyn from the first fic?" Galadriel shot Ziva an apologetic look. "They were the agents who came to fetch you."

"An angry Elf dressed like he stepped out of the 1930's came to fetch me, actually."

"Ah," said Galadriel, "that would be Haldir, the Marchwarden."

"Well at least you didn't just get spit out of nowhere in the middle of the Valardamn forest with everything in your head but a clear idea of where you are," I muttered grudgingly. I'd only joined this company in the first place so I wouldn't spend the rest of my days wandering uselessly around the woods, living on nothing but bark and stream water that would probably give me giardia.

I did remember Tauriel and Eowyn, believe it or not. At least, I knew their story. But it wasn't as if I knew off the top of my head which of Galadriel's batty friends she was referring to at any given time.

"Either way, it's about time we started ignoring their restraining orders," Filmamir said.

"And paid a real visit, rather than Haldir and Spalko's disastrous and unsanctioned one, to the Dynamic Duo of the Last Fic," finished Tolkienmir.

It seemed that for the first time, we had just about come to an agreement. But The Plot just wouldn't settle for such a resolution. I stepped a few paces back and heard a sickening crunch under my feet. In horror, I looked down.

Galadriel's laptop lay crushed on the ground. She had left it wide open, and not only was the screen sporting a major crack, but its two parts had split unevently, wires hanging out of each.

There was a long, miserable silence. Galadriel knelt beside the broken device, but whatever healing magic she possessed only applied to living things.

"No," she murmured, scooping up the broken pieces of the laptop. "No…" She allowed her voice to trail off tragically. "At least Mithrandir could reincarnate."

"Um… you might want to replace that," said Ziva carefully. Her eyebrow shot up as Galadriel held the ruined laptop gently, her eyes betraying her panic.

"She was rather attached to that," said Filmamir.

Tolkienmir rolled his eyes. "It was the only thing that allowed her such great control over alternate universes. Plus she was streaming _Downton Abbey, _and she was halfway through season four. She'll off herself before she lets someone else tell her what happens to Edith and Micheal Gregson."

For a moment I was tempted to just write off the Lady's devastation as a bad case of Netflix Disease, but then I remembered- "Hold on. If the laptop is what allowed Galadriel control over alternate universes, was that our only way to transport ourself to the modern AU?"

Galadriel looked up, her eyes hollow and furious. "Yes," she said pointedly, collecting herself and tenderly placing the remains of her computer in her rucksack, next to the Field Guide. "Now we have but one choice."

Ziva's eyebrows shot up. "And what is that?"

Galadriel looked determinedly into the distance, the way people do when they want to appear majestic or particularly brooding. Think Thorin Oakenshield.

"We hijack a TARDIS."

"You have got to be kidding me."

* * *

So there we were, waiting between two boulders like the ragtag band of complete idiots we really are, for a TARDIS to come flying overhead. Galadriel had pulled a few unlikely things out of her rucksack and seemed determined not to explain their presence.

First, she had a complete kit of costume makeup.

Secondly, she had twenty feet of rope.

And lastly, she had a towel, washed and neatly folded, "just in case of an emergency."

"What's the makeup for?" I gestured to the set, now laying open in the grass. She shot me that same dangerous grin and not even bothered to answer. The Faramirs caught quick wind of her silence and burst out laughing at me.

"What?" I demanded.

"Last time she looked at someone like that," said Tolkienmir between chortles.

"They wound up piss drunk at the top of a tree after a trip to the Woodland Realm to appeal to the better nature of Suethor-Thranduil. To this day no one knows what happened."

I gulped. "How long ago was this?"

Tolkienmir shrugged his shoulders, still giggling like a pre-teen girl who just got asked to the dance. "Little while after Tauriel and Eowyn left. Spalko just about flayed Suethor-Thranduil alive before reinstating his canon counterpart, who, while perhaps a little vain and short-tempered, is far more reasonable than the Suethor's interpretation."

I grabbed Filmamir by the collar, dragging him down to my level (as I am unfortunately… vertically challenged, for a human). "I have been used twice as bait in this venture, and the second time I almost got laid by a carnivorous monster with unnatural eye color. Whatever scheme Galadriel has cooked up, you will get me out of it."

"Too late," came the singsong crow of Lady Galadriel, who had spread her costume makeup across the grass. "You're the perfect height and build to play hostile alien, if I do say so myself. All we have to do is make you look a little more threatening."

Honestly, I couldn't tell whether that was a compliment disguised as an insult or an insult disguised as a compliment.

I eyed the makeup suspiciously. "No. You're not putting that on my face. Not now, not ever. Not if this was our only hope of survival."

Galadriel narrowed her eyes. "How very eloquent of you, Sam-I-Am. Now come here and sit still."

I looked desperately at the Faramirs, but they had gone back to laughing at me. Ziva simply shot me a glance of the slightest pity and quirked her lips in amusement.

"Why me?" I whined.

"The rest of us are all too recognizable. And Ziva looks more like an attractive doctor's companion than an alien; I doubt I could make her look like a hideous monster if I tried."

The Faramirs snickered.

"Oh, hush," muttered Galadriel as I reluctantly sat in front of her.

"Why did you even have that thing with you anyway?" I grumbled as the first dabs of green face paint reached my nose.

"Thought it might come in handy. You never know when you might need someone to look like a Sue or a Stu. Or an extra-terrestrial out for blood."

"Really, though," said Filmamir, "there's no difference between them."

The makeup took hours, but at last I was ready. I didn't even ask for a mirror, but I could see the different shades of green covering my face. She'd even stuck me with scarwax and prosthetics over my nose, my chin… everywhere.

It was itchier than the bug bites.

"I want the towel," I demanded.

"Nonsense," said Galadriel briskly, scooping it up and shoving it back into her rucksack, which was apparently a lot bigger than it looked. "It's for emergencies only. If you cover it in paint now, you'll regret it when we find ourselves in a life threatening situation."

"Why do you need a towel anyway?"

"Who knows? Now go into that field and act like a hostile alien."

"How would I know what a hostile alien looks like?"

"Just imagine the being trapped in a small dark room forced to listen to Tolkienmir's singing. That ought to drive you mad enough."

I grimaced. "Yeah, that'll do it."

"Great, now off with you." She shoved me toward the field, and I stumbled out into the open. Well, crap. What to do now?

I waved my arms around like a mad Cthulhu for a while, as if that would do anything. Galadriel had the Faramirs set up behind two bushes, each Faramir clutching a thick Elven rope that would hopefully be enough to restrain any alien which landed.

I pranced about the field like a moron for a few hours, sure that Galadriel's plan was so simple it would fail, when we finally managed to flag down a tardis. The thing dropped out of the sky like a glowing refrigerator and I only had a few seconds to get out of the way before it landed.

The door swung open, and there stood the Doctor, in all the glory of his 10th form, that being the form which had the fangirls screaming.

He took one look at me, and his eyebrows shot up into his forehead. "What the hell are you doing?" he demanded, looking me up and down. "An Earth man costumed up like some tentacled _thing._ I sensed signs of unusual life on this planet. A distress signal from a stranded ship, not some wackjob dancing in an empty field."

I blinked at him. "Um… well…" I hadn't the faintest clue what to say; after all, I knew precious little about the Doctor. The Fourth Wall didn't bother to cover that universe, so I'd never learned about it. "You see…"

"Is that… cream paint?" He gestured to my face.

I glared at him. "Yes, in fact, it is. Do you have a problem with that?" Don't blame me for my attitude. I'd been out there far too long, and my face had begun to itch like nothing else. "It's a style you wouldn't understand."

Half-truth: It might not have been a style, but I certainly didn't understand it.

"Very well, then. Are you in distress, because I followed your signal."

"I've been in distress for a long time," I muttered. "Where were you to save me when I got into that ATV with the two Faramirs and Galadriel?"

"Excuse me?" The Doctor leaned in, his eyebrows drawn together in confusion. "Didn't quite catch that."

That was when Filmamir jumped him from behind, and I breathed a sigh of relief at not having to answer him. They wrestled to the ground, and Tolkienmir tied his hands behind his back. Personally, I don't think either Faramir was in a rush to get off him by the time Galadriel approached, looking quite pleased with herself.

"That's enough," she said with a wave of her hand, and the Faramirs reluctantly released him, hands and feet bound together. "Did you frisk him?"

They nodded, rather enthusiastically.

"Good."

Staring down at the Doctor, I wondered again how I had ever managed to get myself into this mess.

"I must admit, Doctor, for such a wizened old character, your reflexes are somewhat lacking."

The Doctor wrinkled his nose. "Who _are _you?" he asked derisively.

Galadriel's smile faded into a glare. "I am the Lady of the Wood. And I am quite a bit older and wiser than you. So keep your mouth shut."

She could honestly be quite frightening when she wanted to. I was sure of the older part, but the wiser part... well perhaps she had the mirror for a reason. She possessed far more wisdom, I'm sure, than she did foresight.

"I have a request to make of you. We need the TARDIS."

Well. That cut straight to the point. Apparently the Lady of the Wood was also lacking in tact when dealing with extra-terrestrials.

"Now hold on." The Doctor, too, looked sufficiently annoyed. Probably had to do with being tied up in Elven ropes. "Who sent out a distress signal to lure me in in the first place?"

"I will be asking the questions here," Galadriel snapped, in her best Gibbs voice, and I wondered how many cop shows she'd been watching to have picked up so accurately on their cheesy methods of interrogation. I was fairly certain that most cops didn't interrogate people the way they did on TV. "Do you or do you not possess a transportation device capable of bringing us between dimensions."

The Doctor nodded. "I do, but you have to know how to operate it properly-"

"And do you or do you not have the capability of travelling in time?"

"Well, yes, I do, but-"

"Then I guess it's settled. Faramirs, I need you to get in the TARDIS. Ziva, bring him with us." She straightened out her hat on her head. I was still rooted to the spot, rather shocked at what had just gone down.

We had just kidnapped a Time Lord.

We had just… kidnapped… a Time Lord.

Why, oh why, did I sign up for this job?

Galadriel patted my shoulder as she passed by. "Nice work, Max. I'm sure there's a sink in that spaceship somewhere that you can use to wash all that oil paint off your face."

That was… shit.

"That was _oil paint _the whole time?"

But she was already in the ship. Rolling my eyes, I high-tailed it into the TARDIS. It was far bigger on the inside, which already bent the laws of nature. No wonder the Fourth Wall had never bothered to cover this place. It would have shattered universes ago otherwise.

Galadriel and Ziva were at the controls, pressing random buttons. The door closed, and I could feel it start to spin. I grabbed at the walls.

"How do you work this?" Galadriel shouted over her shoulder to the Doctor, but he shook his head wildly. "Ziva, press that big red button and see what it does!"

A nice hot cup of tea poured out of a hatch.

Then everything was quiet.

"Where are we?"

I tried to pry open the door. "It's sealed!" The Faramirs groaned, still holding onto the Doctor. They seemed rather impressed at his physique.

"How did you even get him to land a ship this complicated? There was a distress signal!"

Galadriel grinned at me, holding up the towel.

"The universe works in mysterious ways."

"You _are _completely mad," the Doctor scoffed, struggling against the grip of the Faramirs. "And what the _hell _is the towel for?"

_*Genius: A really bad idea, usually not thought out at all, that by some miracle actually works_

_Synonyms: winging it_

**That's it for now, folks! In the next chapter we might actually meet our Mary Sue :) Also, I don't know too much about the Doctor, and he'll be around for a little while, so _Doctor Who _fans, feel free to correct any mistakes I made in writing him. I'd also like to note that the _Battle of Five Armies _was everything I expected it to be, the good and the bad. And Galadriel was badass, man. I kind of wanted to get up and cheer for her. Totally awesome. She definitely made the movie and lived up to the power of her parody persona.**

**Now I'll just be straightforward with you guys and beg for reviews, rather than bribe you with some underhanded technique like stale Christmas cookies.**

**Have a Happy New Year, and don't forget to make an extensive list of resolutions you know you'll never be able to keep :)**


	5. The Lazy Alien's 7-11

**Hello, and welcome back to the fic I haven't been active on in over a month. My apologies for the delay, I was quite wrapped up in quite a few different things which I will categorize as "stuff" and be done with it. So here we are, after all this time, with the next Sue. Not to mention a TARDIS...**

_Sherlock Sue: Written to possess an intelligence to rival that of the famed consulting detective, this Sue is far more emotional under the pretense of being less driven by her emotions. In other words, she wallows in her angst without ever making a definitive decision about the subject of her angst. She also tends to be unusually tall, dark-haired, and pretty much Sherlock himself in female form. This Sue applies only to the BBC TV series. _

At this point in our adventure I wondered vaguely which fandom we technically belonged to. I mean, sure at some point it all comes back to Tolkien, but Galadriel was dressed like Indiana Jones and talked like she was interrogating a murder suspect (and don't even get me started on Ziva). And here we all were, stuck in a TARDIS as we whizzed through time and space trying to figure out how to land.

Well. Maybe Galadriel had a towel for that too.

The TARDIS was a chorus of 'what does this do?'s and 'Don't press that!'s as Galadriel and Ziva did their best to fly us toward the modern!AU Sue.

"Can't we program this to find disruptions in the Fourth Wall? I mean that's pretty much what it's supposed to do!" I has assigned myself to the task of untangling tubes and wires around central control system of the thing.

"It's losing fuel." the Doctor sounded a lot less worried than the rest of us, given he could just regenerate every time he crash landed. Not to mention he'd be rid of us pretty quickly too. We'd all be either sandwiched on the surface of an uninhabited planet in the outer reaches of the galaxy or, more probably, suffocating and imploding at the same time as we drifted through outer space.

"Well, what does it run on?" Galadriel shouted to the Doctor, who was still bound up between the Faramirs like a misplaced, kinky sandwich.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "It runs on UST," he muttered, barely audible.

"It runs on what?" asked Galadriel though gritted teeth. Well, gee, you'd think with the Elven hearing and all she'd have picked up on that.

"Right now it's running on a build-up of unresolved UST, okay? Why do you think the companions are always female? How do you think I've been getting around all these years without so much as an inter-galactic refueling station?"

I snorted. I should have known. Fear of death really draws your attention toward basic survival, rather than the asses of other members of your company, as touched on in the undebatable chemistry of Bilbo Baggins and Thorin Oakenshield. Even the Faramirs had taken their eyes off the Doctor and were a bit more focused on the blinking lights and the fact that I swear to the Valar we were all about to bite the dust in the most horrific, lonely death scene since _Gravity. _Where was Sandra Bullock when you needed her?

And then Galadriel threw her hat behind her with all the shameless romanticism of a bad cowboy movie, grabbed Ziva, and kissed her hard. I'm talking the full-on face consumption of all that unresolved sexual tension that our author couldn't bear to stretch out any longer.

"Ask me why I did that," said Galadriel after they'd broken apart, albeit somewhat breathlessly given that by the Valar they had been sucking face for far longer than was necessary or even reasonable just to heighten the sexual tension of a room.

"Why did you do that?" There was so little question actually in the question that I was fairly sure the answer was something along the lines of 'we both know you've been ogling me ever since we met; why did you wait until we were all about to die to actually kiss me?'

"I don't know. I have absolutely no idea."

Ah, so that's what she was doing. Give someone a big fat smooch and then when they ask why, just say you don't know and you have to sort out your feelings. Guaranteed to double the UST in any closed space and make everyone around you melt into puddles of awkwardness until they work up enough energy to leave.

Oh, that's right. We couldn't leave. Because we were still hurtling toward our inevitable doom.

And came the Faramirs to save the day. Because they were so wrapped up in their own relationship that they had no shame interrupting significant moments in the relationships of others. Which, most of the time, is rude and uncalled for, but right now probably saved our sorry asses. "Excuse me, ladies, but if you're not too busy staring lovingly into each other's eyes, we've got a TARDIS about to crash."

Their eyes tore apart. The frantic beeping stopped. Everything seemed to calm down in an instant.

"I guess this thing really does run on UST," I muttered.

Ziva groaned. "All right, but how will we refuel without having hazy and easily misinterpreted discussions about our feelings for each other every couple of minutes?"

And there it was. That little light bulb going off in my head that reminded me why I was considered the 'brain' spawn of the Fourth Wall.

"Guys," I said, "I know where we're going." Because for once in my entire friggin' life, I _did _actually know where we were going, rather than just tagging along with a sinking feeling that my role in Galadriel's master plan would be less than desirable.

Collective eyebrows shot up. The Doctor just glared at me. Because wherever I was going, it probably wasn't where he was supposed to be going.

"We're going to pay a visit to _Sherlock._"

The Faramirs grinned from ear to ear. I had a feeling that if it weren't Benedict Cumberbatch were were talking about here, Galadriel would tell them to keep their minds out of the gutter. But it would have been a fruitless effort anyway. The Faramirs, while wholly devoted to each other, had a weakness for posh BBC characters. I could see why.

Off we were, to the land of subtext that goes way beyond subtext to the point where all you want is for the screenwriters to just say, 'screw it, they're a couple,' and be done with the whole debate.

The TARDIS whirred and buzzed and all that crap, and we sat in a painfully awkward silence, waiting for it to land. At some point we untied the Doctor, and Galadriel had the sense to ask nicely for him to take us all to our desired universe.

She offered him a towel for his trouble, but he turned it down, preferring to make himself a nice hot cup of tea. I took the towel and wiped Galadriel's _oil paint _off my face. The TARDIS did have a sink and a bathroom, with a fully functional bathtub, because apparently even nine hundred year old aliens need to shower once in a while.

I was _not _ready to disembark when we landed. In fact, I was half way though a long, oil-paint slick shower when the TARDIS spun to a halt. And when I say spun, I mean the head-on-shower-handle collision of suddenly being met with atmospheric pressure and time that passes at a regular rate.

Not that time _ever_ passes at a regular rate when you're skipping universes, but after you've been flying through time and space for the last few hours (if hours even pass in this thing) the first thing you feel upon landing is the intense pressure of intergalactic, millennial jet lag.

And then you realize that the shower is the worst possible place to pass out. Then you get out as quickly as possible, slip on the floor of the TARDIS and hit your head again on the sink, because for a magic flying telephone box that's supposed to be 'bigger on the inside,' this thing has got a bathroom the size of a broom closet.

I poked my head out the door. "Why'd we land so soon?"

"Shortcut," said Filmamir from the other side of the door.

"We traveled through Hobbit movieverse."

"You skipped the Fourth Wall again?! Don't you know it gives me a headache?" Every time the Fourth Wall (or the shambles remaining of it) broke a little bit more, my head just started to kill. Not to mention I'd just hit it twice, but that seemed irrelevant.

"Easy," said Tolkienmir from the control panel, "If you have a horcrux in you, we can probably remove it."

"Wait-I thought you had to commit murder to create a horcrux." Filmamir furrowed his brow. "Did you never read the books?"

Tolkienmir looked appalled. "Of course I read the books! But the Fourth Wall has likely killed many a desperate fangirl and fanboy in its time. More than enough for it to spit out a horcrux. And just in time too, after Spalko and Haldir's daughter. Half Elf and half assassin- practically a Sue begging to be written, but raised by high-ranking members of the GCWFHB. But as far as horcruxes are concerned, probably a dozen ways to rid him of one if necessary. We can just take it out and shove it in a sack somewhere, sling it into space. That way no one can kill the Fourth Wall entirely, but Max wouldn't get migraines. Right, Max?" he shouted in my direction as I frantically tried to dress myself before we left.

"Clearly, you didn't read the books. You probably haven't even watched the films." Filmamir glared at him.

"Might want to hurry up, Max!" Tolkienmir pounded on the door. "Galadriel's leaving, and she's impatient enough to leave anyone but Ziva behind." I could hear shuffling on the Faramirs' side of the door as I laced up my shoes in a hurry.

I put on my coat, racing out of the bathroom as the TARDIS closed up again. And I was left on my own with a surly Tenth Doctor.

"Just left," said the Doctor, gesturing to the door. "You might catch them." He shrugged. "You might not."

I ran to the door, stopping as the Doctor called behind me, "If you can't find your companions, just invite a random girl back here. Kiss her cheek, if you must, but nothing too forward or we cross the line between UST and sexual harassment. We can take off, and leave them behind. Adventure of a lifetime, intergalactic war, and so on."

I rolled my eyes at him and bolted out the door, into the streets of London. For future reference, the streets of London were busy, rather smelly, and tinted a metallic grey, but the grey could just be an effect of the Sherlock universe.

The streets of London were also quite devoid of Middle Earth life. Galadriel, the Faramirs, and Ziva were nowhere in sight. Well. At least I knew where they stood in terms of our fellowship. I wonder if Legolas would have ditched Aragorn and Gimli halfway through had he gotten the chance. I mean, he got all the good stunts anyway. He probably could have taken out Sauron's entire army on his own.

I wandered down a random street, trying to find some sort of landmark that might give me an idea of where I was in relation to anything. I mean, practically being programmed with information about popular, groundbreaking, and endangered universes was one thing. Actually being in them was another.

I could spout all the information I wanted about Narnia. But if the TARDIS dropped me there, I would be royally screwed.

So here I was, trapped in a fandom I knew everything about but had no idea how to navigate. No Elf-witches or snarky stewards or assassins to trail around.

I stepped into the street, and a taxi whizzed by, inches from running over me. All I could see were cars and people and buildings everywhere I turned. If this was a modern city, I wanted nothing of it. Once this whole Valardamned ordeal was over, I would settle down in a nice countryside, where there were no cities and no wilderness. Nothing that could run me over, and nothing that could eat me.

Clearly, I would never survive on my own.

Looking at the signs, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself at the corner of Baker Street. Who better to help me out of this mess than the universe's titular character? I turned the corner, then stopped dead short.

"Pardon," said a tall, dark-haired woman with alabaster skin and twinkling lavender-

Shit.

If it hadn't been for the purple eyes, I might have assumed this woman was a genderbent Sherlock Holmes. That, and the light, airy voice that sounded like it had come straight from a Disney knockoff. It didn't matter whether Sherlock was male or female-that voice just didn't match.

There was only one thing this woman could be.

I had just run into a Sherlock-Sue.

The Sue extended its hand. "I'm so sorry for my lack of manners. I am Velouria Moriarity."

So the author was going for an 'arch-nemesis's sister' angle. How cliche.

"Max," I said, because yeah, that's pretty much my whole name. One boring, three-letter syllable, which alone proves I could never become a Stu, no matter how hard I tried.

The Sue adjusted its purse, tossing its smooth mahogany locks over its shoulder, its eyes sparkling in-No. Stop it.

It was the first time I'd faced down a Sue on my own, not counting the times Galadriel used me as bait. At least then I knew that the people who had my back could kill you with a paper clip.

"Galadriel," I whined quietly, praying to the Valar that she'd turn up behind me. It was here, in a near-death situation, the question struck me why I prayed to the Valar. I mean, technically I wasn't born into Tolkien-verse. I looked like any geeky Andrew Garfield character ever, albeit shorter, and with more acne and a hell of a lot less muscular, but… you get the picture. Basically, I was in no place to be associating myself with the curses and pleads of the Tolkien universe.

Of course, that's where I popped out of the Fourth Wall, blipped into existence in complete defiance of the Law of Conservation of Matter, but it's not like I really looked like I could have lived there. Anyone born into a universe filled with orcs and immortal Sues and _that much _sexual tension (although I'm pretty sure most of it is Galadriel's fault, in the long run) had to be somewhat hardened.

Obviously, I was not. And I was showing it here, facing down the most dangerous Mary-Sue any of us had faced down yet. And I was doing it without back-up of any kind. Not even a multi-purpose towel.

_Where's an assassin when you need one?_

The Sue applied a layer of lip gloss. "I was coming from 221B," it said in that twinkling post-spinoff Tinkerbell voice. "Meeting with Sherlock Holmes."

"That's nice," I squeaked.

"You look rather like Doctor Watson," the Sue continued, as if I hadn't spoken, "are you related to him?"

"No," I said, and then, finally deciding to _not _act like a scared puppy, lest I die in such a position, I proceeded to ask her, "do you really think that Sherlock Holmes appreciates your visit?"

In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have said that.

It stuck out its lower lip in an unreasonably attractive pout, tears coming to its eyes. You'd think a Sue that supposedly spent time around Sherlock Holmes would be a little bit less sensitive, but no. It just started quietly crying in front of me. Its tears were the kind that demanded sympathy, no matter how reluctant you were to give it. Clearly, its intent was to lure me into comforting it and then to stab me with a knife it undoubtedly kept in that purse.

"I don't know what to do without him," it whispered with so much emotion I thought its head would explode. I could feel my eardrums drooping. "I don't know if he loves me as much as I love him, and I'm too afraid to declare my love." _Hi kids, let's see how many times you can use the word 'love' in one sentence without making your audience feel any real emotion!_

Generally, when a Sue starts angsting over whether to declare their love for whichever character, they _decide _in the end whether to do it or not. But this Sue, in some twisted sense trying to be a "strong female character" didn't "base her decisions off her emotions." It still suffered all those pesky angstmotions, just without the payoff. Excellent.

Maybe that meant instead of killing me, it would angst about the possibility of killing me, and never come to a verdict on the matter.

It was then that I remembered something-way back on Caradhras. The ice block Sue, that Galadriel killed off using the inconsistencies of cryogenics. Logic. This was the Sherlock fandom after all.

"You know" I said, laying an awkward hand on Velouria's shoulder. "Sherlock is described as a high-functioning sociopath. Technically, the definition of a sociopath is someone who's incapable of feeling empathy or having a conscience. While he can feel emotion, sociopaths tend to be rather antisocial, and it's unlikely he would ever attach himself to you as a romantic partner. Plus he and John Watson are hopelessly entangled in the net of complete infatuation and unresolved sexual tension. It's not worth your trouble."

What? That was logic, through and through.

_Def. angstmotions: the spectrum of emotions conveyed purely through unbearable angst._

**Well, hope you enjoyed. Don't forget: the campaign for bags of chips that don't just contain air is still open. Just review :) ****I don't even know how that campaign got started. I think I mentioned something way back in... ****ugh, never mind. I don't even know how those two things are related anymore. Reviews are to authors what Pringles are to Netflix binge-watchers.**


	6. In which Galadriel Gets Drunk

**You will find that no Mary Sues are slayed in this chapter, but much ale is consumed and many bad ideas are hatched, which I hope rather makes up for it. I also apologize for my ridiculously long absence. I've been penning an original story that has sapped up all my attention of late.**

* * *

I found my ragtag band of Sue-slayers, or at least two of them, hunched over pints of beer at a local pub crowding with all walks of life. I felt accomplished and real pleased with myself, brewing with confidence, so much so that in the back of my mind I almost knew I was forgetting something important.

Pride and satisfaction have a bad habit of precluding a terrible mistake.

"Oi!" Filmamir barked, elbowing Tolkienmir and jerking his chin toward me as I walked into the bar. "Look who it is?"

Tolkienmir grinned. "You're back, Max."

"That I am," I said, taking a seat beside them. "Ran into a Mary-Sue on my way. The Sherlock-Sue. I was making my way toward Baker Street when it just appeared in front of me, the most flawless thing I'd ever seen. I took it out, of course, to preserve the integrity of the universe…" I trailed off, realizing that the Sherlock-Sue had absolutely no relevance to our quest whatsoever. She was completely unconnected to Middle Earth. "She's not in Galadriel's book, is she?" I muttered dejectedly.

The Faramirs shook their heads. "Not if she's here," said Tolkienmir.

"So nothing to brag to her about?"

Filmamir shrugged. "Not unless you brought the Sue's hair ribbon back with you like a serial killer taking his trophy."

"Besides, Galadriel probably wouldn't want to hear a peep about Sues right now. She and Ziva disappeared 'bout an hour ago, said they were going for a walk. Haven't come back yet."

Figures. I snorted, completely unsurprised. "At least they live up to Tauriel's expectation, finally taking a needle to that balloon of sexual tension."

"Common when the circumstances seem hopeless to overcome."

"What circumstances?" So we're in another rut? Brilliant. Just brilliant.

The Faramirs shared a look. "Doctor's gone. We've no way out of London, as it is," said Tolkienmir.

Oh. Those circumstances. To be fair, I hadn't really tried to make him stay; I'd just rushed from the TARDIS in blind, lost, panic. Valar, the Doctor had even offered me a free ride and the adventures of a lifetime! Could've just taken him up on that and been dropped off in my own-oh, yeah. I didn't have a canon. There's that-just one more thing I could add to the list of total bullshit I'd been through since getting spat out in Middle Earth.

"We should find the lovebirds," said Filmamir, "then figure out how to get out of this mess."

Which mess? The one where we can't get out of Sherlockian London, or the one where Galadriel let loose a bunch of Mary Sues she expects us to help her round up? Or the one where she roped a former Mossad assassin into the party and is falling in love with her? Huh, Plot? I demand to know where you're going with this.

I looked up at the 'mirs. "Yeah, we should, shouldn't we?" I muttered, swigging from Filmamir's pint. "Don't look at me like that; I'm not underage. I don't even _have _an age."

The slap on the back of my head was loud and impossible to mistake as anyone other than our own "I-don't-watch-too-much-NCIS" Galadriel. "Max, you're underage," she scolded, taking the pint and stealing a large gulp of it for herself.

"No I'm not! I'm immortal!"

"Well you _look _underage."

"I'm a brainchild. We always look underage."

The Faramirs, from their clearly inebriated position on the stools, scrutinized Galadriel closely.

"Get enough fresh air?" drawled Filmamir, his eyes sparkling mischievously as they zeroed in on flaming red mark that marred Galadriel's perfect Elven neck.

"Indeed I did," she replied enigmatically, the corners of her lips slipping upwards just the tiniest bit in difficult-to-conceal self-satisfaction. "And wouldn't you guess what Ziva found on the sidewalk, discarded and rusty."

Tolkienmir cocked his head in question. I watched Ziva slide from the crowd, silently approaching the two from behind until she leaned between their shoulders. "A paper clip!" she hissed into their ears with a sharp glare a the scheming couple.

The Faramirs startled, the grins vanishing instantly from their faces as Ziva shot them a complacent smirk and sat down on a stool on their other side. "So," she began as if the Faramirs still weren't trying to find their lungs, "we are trapped in London."

I sighed, reaching out to steal Filmamir's pint again, but he snatched it away. "Isn't there someone we could call? Galadriel," I whined, "you have contacts in the GCWFHB." Mouthful of an acronym. "They fic-jump all the time. There's got to be at least one number you have with you."

"Number…" Faramir murmured. A light-bulb look flashed across his face. "The London train station. Galadriel qualifies as an Elf-witch, right?" He ducked his head and pointedly refused to look Galadriel in the eye. "She could get us into Platform nine and three quarters."

But Galadriel shut down the plan before it even got past the 'bad idea' stage. "Elf magic on its own unfortunately does not qualify as wizardry. We would have to study every similarity between Middle Earth and J.K. Rowling's universe, down to the smallest details, then write a crossover fan fiction popular enough earn its own little canon slot."

Ziva, out of us all, knew the least about fan fiction, and seemed painfully confused. "How can a fan fiction expansion of the original universe become canon? Especially if it is a crossover?"

"Ah, my darling assassin," Galadriel crowed smugly, taking on the tone of a pretentious old lecturer, "Have you never met our dear friends Spalko and Haldir?"

Ziva narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "I am afraid not."

Galadriel chuckled warmly at the resurfacing memories. "Oh, do I have a tale to tell you." The Elven queen was showing signs of slight inebriation, I noted, and a drunken story by Galadriel had to be entertaining.

"A year ago is merely a moment in six thousand years," she began grandly, "and it was a year ago that Tauriel of Mirkwood materialized in Caras Galadhon with a laptop computer and a terrible idea. And you know-a bad idea ought to be duly ignored. But a _terrible _idea should be followed through to the end."

Ziva smirked and leaned back against the bar counter, clearly enjoying herself. But whether she was enjoying the story or the fact that Galadriel's arm was slung over her shoulders I couldn't discern for myself. Even drunk, though, Galadriel sat with grace and poise.

"If you'll recall, Jenny Shepard was there as well-"

Ziva stiffened. "Impossible. She is dead," she said sharply.

The Faramirs shrunk back into their seats, and I bit my lip. Apparently Galadriel had failed to mention that Jenny Shepard was alive and well, hunting Sues in Middle Earth with Gibbs.

Galadriel, the ale having reached her head at this point and slowly whittling away at her senses of guilt and self-preservation, dissented, completely unabashed. "You would be right to say she is dead in _your _canon, but you forget that each fan fiction has its own version of events. Think of it as a flow chart, or perhaps a language tree, each branch splitting off as time goes on where the outcomes differ."

Apparently Galadriel was just as intellectual drunk as she was sober; she was just a lot more pompous about it.

"Are you telling me that Jenny is _alive; _my friend is alive, and you simply _forgot _to mention that earlier?"

"I guess she let the cat out of the sack," muttered Filmamir.

"Bag," Ziva corrected him on instinct. "Let the cat out of the bag. I learned that one the difficult way."

"Anyway," Galadriel piped up pointedly, annoyed that she had been so rudely interrupted in her storytelling, "Tauriel accompanied the Fellowship of the Ring until the Battle of Helm's Deep, when she allied herself with Colonel-Doctor Irina Spalko, resident commander of the GCWFHB."

"The _what_?" Ziva demanded.

"The Guild of Characters Who Fan Fiction Has Butchered."

"It is a poor acronym."

"That's what Tauriel said."

Filmamir nudged Galadriel with the hand that wasn't holding the ale. "Get on with the story." Of course, he'd already heard this story, but was most likely just enjoying the idea of drunken Galadriel rambling on about the series of events that led up to her freeing a book full of Sues and eventually getting us stuck in this pub in London on a Tuesday night.

"Eowyn introduced our heroine the AWOL Elf to her OTP: Haldir and Spalko. Now Spalko's canon is a mess of poorly written mush, so she just lives through fic-hopping and doesn't have one. The fanfic effect gives her migraines occasionally. She has back story issues and psychological issues and a shit-load of Plot issues.."

I noticed Galadriel language sounding less and less 'Elf-queen' and more and more 'hard-boiled adventurer' as she sipped her pint of ale. Fitting, since she was still decked out in the full-on Indiana Jones regalia. The world needed more female action heroes, although I doubted this one did. We already had Tauriel and Eowyn, not to mention Spalko and Shepard, all of whom stirred up enough trouble on their own without the help of a bored Galadriel.

"Eowyn was writing up a sappy romance for them, and it became popular enough that it filled her canon slot. They finally got it together in Meduseld, though. In a broom closet, or so I've heard through the grapevine. Their daughter was born three months ago."

Ziva's jaw dropped. "That was your Colonel-Doctor Irina Spalko? I believe I have heard of her. Abby mentioned her to me just before I left. She was with Agents Lasgalen and Riddermark. Tauriel and Eowyn…" she trailed off. "I do not suppose those would be the pair of fic-jumpers you were referring to? Abby mentioned that a woman had stopped by-gone into labor in the bullpen, mind you, before vanishing into thin air with a blonde man who looked like he came from 1930s England. She offered me the job hunting Mary Sues."

Galadriel nodded her confirmation. "That sounds like Spalko, although…" she trailed off thoughtfully for a moment before continuing with a hint of suspicion, "She never told me about going into labor in the NCIS bullpen. I'll have to ask her about that."

"This is proving to be a rather informative conversation. You are much like Jenny in that you speak professionally and talk too much, but you are a lot more crass and informative when you are drunk."

"Flattered," muttered Galadriel, "However I'm fairly sure you didn't stare at Jenny's ass when she walked away."

Ziva was almost amused, fighting to keep a straight face as her lips twitched in betrayal. "No, I did not. But since she has become a topic of conversation, how about you explain to me why you never said she was alive."

Galadriel frowned. "You didn't ask. I assumed you already knew."

"And how would I have already known?"

Galadriel opened her mouth, then shut it awkwardly, trying not to let the guilt show on her face.

"Oops," muttered one of the Faramirs.

"She died in one universe. There were so many more out there in which she was alive that she spent most of her time in limbo between fics," I explained, cutting into the conversation before Ziva and Galadriel could get into a full-blown argument. "Galadriel simply pulled her out of limbo. And Gibbs kind of skipped his canon and turned up here with Spalko and the GCWFHB. There's a plotfiller in there now. A version pulled from a well-written fan fiction that follows the same plot as canon."

"I cannot believe that this information simply skipped Galadriel's mind."

"Sometimes she forgets that other people don't communicate through telepathy," I said matter-of-factly. "Also the term is 'slipped her mind.'"

Suddenly, Galadriel's head shot up from where she'd rested it in her arms on the table. "That's it," she whispered. "I know how we get back to Middle Earth."

"Platform nine and three quarters?" the Faramirs asked hopefully.

Galadriel shook her head. "No. I stand by that we could not reach the platform. I need three things to get us back: a computer, a wi-fi signal, and an orange cat. We're going to get ahold of Jenny Shepard."

Ziva cocked her head. "Why do you need a cat?"

"Because links between universes can only be established by words. I needed some clever wordplay that would be understood by enough people that it has the same effect as a popular fan fiction."

"Again," said Filmamir, "why the cat?"

"Because our favorite Jenny Shepard is a regular Shrodinger's Cat. So a redheaded cat would be greatly appreciated in order to establish the link. Faramirs, I'm tasking the cat to you."

"Anything else?" I inquired.

Galadriel thought about it for a moment, then responded, "Certainly." She waved the bartender over. "Another ale? I need to be more drunk than this if my bad puns are going to be what gets us to Middle Earth."

* * *

**I suppose this chapter cleared up any misconceptions that Tauriel's Legolas-Aragorn-hula-skirt incident didn't over whether or not Elves can get drunk. In my opinion, they most definitely can, and I hope the result was amusing.**


End file.
